A BIOETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD SECURITY POLICY IN INDONESIA
Dr. ANTON APRIYANTONO
Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia
Yogyakarta, 3 – 7 November 2008
It is an honor to me to deliver a lecture with a title “A BIOETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD SECURITY POLICY IN INDONESIA”. As you are already aware, like the rest of the world, Indonesia will face new challenges in the 21st century. The foremost challenge is to feed its growing population using a relatively constant, if not shrinking, agricultural lands. This may sound like a classic problem that has been with us all along, but in this century, this challenge will be compounded by a more severe global climate change and the volatile price and availability of fuels.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with only the 15th largest area. A large portion of that area housed a vast rainforest, which its importance to the world's climate condition is unquestionable. This fact has put us straight into an ethical problem. The easiest way to increase agricultural productivity is by increasing the planting area. But increasing the agricultural area may sacrifice some of the rainforest, which can have a long-lasting impact on the future generation in Indonesia and the rest of the world. The global scope of the impact also reminds us of why this conference we are having now is important, because the inhabitants of the world need to collaborate to solve a problem that in the long term will affect everyone living on this planet.
Research and development in science has produced numerous breakthrough in supporting agricultural development. Other than the green revolution, science has also provided us with new technologies to unlock the secret of the genomes of every organism important in agriculture, which opens the possibility for the development of new plant varieties with improved yield and qualities. There is no doubt that we need to develop and invest in science. But science alone cannot answer all of our problems. Science may inform us that clearing several hundred hectares of rainforest for rice plantation will give us several tones of rice grain at the cost of increasing global temperature and rising sea level by several magnitudes. But science does not tell us whether we should cut the trees or keep the forest. The decision to clear the land for the rice or keeping the forest for environmental reason is an ethical decision.
That is one of the reason we cannot separate ethics from science. Without ethical considerations, application of science have the potential to cause harm to human welfare and dignity. On the other hand, discussing ethics without considering available scientific facts is rarely productive. Ethics and science must go hand in hand, and this is especially important for a democratically elected government who is constantly required to make decisions and policies in the interest of the general public.
One of the most important human rights is access to food. A sound policy on food security is required to assure that the basic right of every citizen to obtain food is fulfilled. Indonesia currently has a population of around 237 million people, with 1.3 % population growth each year. It is the task of the government as well as community together to assure food availability for all people.
The basic premise of every food security program is that there should be enough food available and that everyone should be able to access it. The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture attempts to reach this target through the following approaches: First, strengthening the food supply by optimizing available resources in a sustainable manner; Second, improving the food distribution system to ensure food availability for all people across times and regions; Third, encouraging more diversity and balance in food an nutrition consumption; and Fourth, preventing and resolving food scarcity.
The implementation of these policies addresses multiple factors to ensure its success. In order to improve production, the total area of cultivated land, whether it is irrigated or rain-fed, needs to be expanded with careful considerations regarding the environmental impact. Existing land needs to be conserved, and prevented from being converted into real estates or other agriculturally non-productive uses. Some lands will need to be rehabilitated to normalize its productivity. Water supply will also need to be managed through environmental conservation of water supplying area like rivers and other water sources, while existing irrigation channels will need to be maintained and improved.
On the agronomic side, productivity is increased by developing improved varieties and more efficient cultural practices. New technologies and better farming practices are constantly introduced by strengthening extension systems and promoting collaboration between farmers. Investments in agricultural and food sectors are also encouraged. These need a set of sound and comprehensive policies.
One important consideration in creating agricultural policies is that at the end of the day, those policies will have an impact on the lives of human beings, who do not only need physical fulfillment, but also psychological fulfillments. To be effective, those policies will also need participations of the general public. Policies that hurt the mental well-being of the people or ones they find disagreeable with their cultural or religious values will most likely fail. Some of those values that are proven wrong can be amended by public education. But some values, like religion, are considered to be set in stones, and people will adhere to them until the end of their lives. In this case, compromises will need to be made. This is why a discourse in bioethics is important, in order to accommodate all points of view and to find a consensus solution that works for the common good. Although agriculture may simply be viewed as a food production system, its application and impact is not without controversies.
As an example, a relatively recent phenomenon in Indonesia is shifting consumption pattern toward rice as the staple food. People from many regions in Indonesia traditionally consumed a more diverse diet because their environment is not always suitable for growing rice or the supply of rice is not always available all year round. The changing preference for rice has caused a decline in the cultivation of other food crops and putting an enormous pressure on the national rice production and distribution system. As a result, when there is a slight disturbance on the system, many regions with little or no rice-growing capability are under threat from high price of rice and even starvation, because alternative food crops have been neglected or abandoned due to the low demand associated with them.
This problem illustrates the impact of individual preferences on their own food security. Is it ethical to deny people from following their own preference even when it can potentially harm them in the long run? The answer can vary depending on where we are, but in Indonesia we choose the path of public education because we believe that people can make the right choice when they are fully informed on the consequences.
The above example also illustrates that development of agricultural systems will need to observe local custom and belief observance. Customs and norms are often built from ancient experiments which resulted in a tradition adapted to local conditions. Careless intervention of these cultural norms and values not only hurt the feeling and dignity of the people, but can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences from the application of ill-adapted technologies. Similarly, changing local diets and farming practices to fit an over-generalized national policy can potentially harm the food security of that region. Thus, new policies should respect and carefully consider local customs and religious values.
Another inherent problem in creating agricultural policies for food security is the contradiction between improving farmer's income and maintaining low food prices for the general public, in which a large portion still lives under the poverty line. As a consequence, improving farmer's income should not be achieved by increasing the prices of agricultural products, but by other means such as by increasing land holding size through cooperative farming or by improving agricultural productivity.
Increasing productivity, however, does not always guarantee a higher profit for farmers, as it is often accompanied by decreased prices. Therefore once increased productivity is achieved, the govern-ment needs to intervene market to prevent price of agricultural products from falling below the commercial threshold during the harvest season. Conversely, price should not increase too much when available food stock is low, when even farmers themselves become a consumer since their own stock is already depleted and the next harvest is yet to come. This role of the government should be done in such a way that regulates and maintains the national food supply to ensure food availability all year round at a reasonable price.
One of the driving forces behind the increased productivity is improved crop varieties developed by classical breeding and genetic engineering. Genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been under a lot of public scrutiny lately, mostly because many views that these organisms have no precedent in nature and therefore may carry some unknown risks that can harm humans and the environment in general. Such concern is valid, and the government needs to address this problem to ensure public safety while at the same time prevents irrational resistance of a potentially useful technology.
To have a productive and rational debate on the issue, concerns that could be solved by scientific studies need to be separated from those involving legal, philosophical, and moral concerns. Scientific questions such as whether transgenic corn would produce allergic reaction or not can usually be answered in a clear cut manner using a correct scientific experiment. Current method of food safety tests and environmental safety tests for GMO before any commercial release of GMO in Indonesia are the result of well-formulated scientific questions regarding the potential risks of genetically modified organisms. On the other hand, there may not be a ‘correct’ answer to questions related to legal, philosophical, and moral dimension of GMO. Answers to those questions may result from a consensus or a decision by those holding the authority over the issue.
Some concerns regarding GMO, albeit valid, apply equally to organisms obtained from nature or selected through conventional breeding. Natural herbicide-tolerant mutants can also transfer their genes to wild relatives, yet few people seemed concerned if those so called ‘natural’ organisms were released without proper environmental and food safety tests. This shows that there is an underlying fear toward a new technology rather than a serious concern toward environmental safety. Attributing universal risk only toward GMO gives a wrong impression toward genetic modifications, making it appears as a dangerous and malevolent technology. In a way, GMO that passed those safety tests may actually be safer than their natural counterparts, where safety tests are not as rigorously enforced when they are released.
Similar concerns were shown over the use of synthetic chemicals, from fertilizers to food additives, on agricultural products. As in the case of GMO, it should be demonstrated that no hazard will occur on the environment and human health if those chemicals are used. In other word, our attention should be focused on the safety part, rather than the adjectives synthetic versus natural.
Another important component in Indonesian agriculture is the extensive use of livestock. Livestock are kept to supply the need for animal proteins and raw materials for clothing and other necessities. They are also an integral part of our traditional farming system and a necessary component of many traditional and religious rites. But they also become the object of needless sufferings, from inhumane rearing system, transportation activities, to slaughtering practices. Efforts are continuously made to eliminate these misconducts. Moreover, even our traditional and religious teachings emphasized the need to speed up the slaughtering process and encourage the use of the sharpest blade to prevent prolonged suffering of the animals.
Respect and compassion toward other living things should not be confined to animal livestock, but also extend toward all living things in our ecosystem.
After all, our life depends not only on our livestock and plants that we cultivate, but also on other living things not directly connected with our lives. This is because nature is a complex web of interdependent systems. Disruption of one system can affect other systems and eventually return to haunt us. We have learned how careless introduction of rabbits and cane toad to Australia had caused ecological disaster; therefore most countries now have quarantine procedures and strict rules regarding introduced species.
However, we seem less concerned about the other side of the coin: which is the loss of native species due to extinction caused by human activities. Numerous species have perished due to habitat encroachment or environmental damage and pollution caused by human activities. Some of them may produce unknown exotic compounds that cure diseases. Some may disrupt the life cycle of our agricultural pests. Some may not matter to us, because their place in the food chain is not connected to ours. But even that can be misleading. Snakes normally found in rice fields may amount to nothing but nuisance to us, only when we have a great mice infestation on our field that we realize how useful they are. In other words, there are a lot of things that we miss or lost simply because our present knowledge has not understood impact of their presence. We can only hope that we do not grasp their significance when it is already too late.
That is one of the reasons why we take serious steps in conserving nature and maintain biodiversity. Some of the biodiversities can be preserved by our ongoing germplasm collection and conservation program, while others can only be saved by preserving their habitat from human encroachment. It is a very difficult task because sometimes we have to confront people with a more urgent need of feeding their family. Educating them on this issue can be challenging, because the negative effects of their actions are often uncertain, too abstract, or can only be felt in the distant future. It is clear that such program needs to be implemented along with a population control program, which is carried out by encouraging families to have two children or less.
At last but not least, finally, I would like to underline that the development of national policies on agriculture will not be free from controversies; therefore it must be based on solid scientific groundwork and bioethics. The issues can be complex, therefore active discussions by various stakeholders need to be encouraged to achieve a consensus that works for the common good.
Dr. ANTON APRIYANTONO
Minister of Agriculture of the Republic of Indonesia
Yogyakarta, 3 – 7 November 2008
It is an honor to me to deliver a lecture with a title “A BIOETHICAL PERSPECTIVE ON FOOD SECURITY POLICY IN INDONESIA”. As you are already aware, like the rest of the world, Indonesia will face new challenges in the 21st century. The foremost challenge is to feed its growing population using a relatively constant, if not shrinking, agricultural lands. This may sound like a classic problem that has been with us all along, but in this century, this challenge will be compounded by a more severe global climate change and the volatile price and availability of fuels.
Indonesia is the fourth most populous country in the world, with only the 15th largest area. A large portion of that area housed a vast rainforest, which its importance to the world's climate condition is unquestionable. This fact has put us straight into an ethical problem. The easiest way to increase agricultural productivity is by increasing the planting area. But increasing the agricultural area may sacrifice some of the rainforest, which can have a long-lasting impact on the future generation in Indonesia and the rest of the world. The global scope of the impact also reminds us of why this conference we are having now is important, because the inhabitants of the world need to collaborate to solve a problem that in the long term will affect everyone living on this planet.
Research and development in science has produced numerous breakthrough in supporting agricultural development. Other than the green revolution, science has also provided us with new technologies to unlock the secret of the genomes of every organism important in agriculture, which opens the possibility for the development of new plant varieties with improved yield and qualities. There is no doubt that we need to develop and invest in science. But science alone cannot answer all of our problems. Science may inform us that clearing several hundred hectares of rainforest for rice plantation will give us several tones of rice grain at the cost of increasing global temperature and rising sea level by several magnitudes. But science does not tell us whether we should cut the trees or keep the forest. The decision to clear the land for the rice or keeping the forest for environmental reason is an ethical decision.
That is one of the reason we cannot separate ethics from science. Without ethical considerations, application of science have the potential to cause harm to human welfare and dignity. On the other hand, discussing ethics without considering available scientific facts is rarely productive. Ethics and science must go hand in hand, and this is especially important for a democratically elected government who is constantly required to make decisions and policies in the interest of the general public.
One of the most important human rights is access to food. A sound policy on food security is required to assure that the basic right of every citizen to obtain food is fulfilled. Indonesia currently has a population of around 237 million people, with 1.3 % population growth each year. It is the task of the government as well as community together to assure food availability for all people.
The basic premise of every food security program is that there should be enough food available and that everyone should be able to access it. The Indonesian Ministry of Agriculture attempts to reach this target through the following approaches: First, strengthening the food supply by optimizing available resources in a sustainable manner; Second, improving the food distribution system to ensure food availability for all people across times and regions; Third, encouraging more diversity and balance in food an nutrition consumption; and Fourth, preventing and resolving food scarcity.
The implementation of these policies addresses multiple factors to ensure its success. In order to improve production, the total area of cultivated land, whether it is irrigated or rain-fed, needs to be expanded with careful considerations regarding the environmental impact. Existing land needs to be conserved, and prevented from being converted into real estates or other agriculturally non-productive uses. Some lands will need to be rehabilitated to normalize its productivity. Water supply will also need to be managed through environmental conservation of water supplying area like rivers and other water sources, while existing irrigation channels will need to be maintained and improved.
On the agronomic side, productivity is increased by developing improved varieties and more efficient cultural practices. New technologies and better farming practices are constantly introduced by strengthening extension systems and promoting collaboration between farmers. Investments in agricultural and food sectors are also encouraged. These need a set of sound and comprehensive policies.
One important consideration in creating agricultural policies is that at the end of the day, those policies will have an impact on the lives of human beings, who do not only need physical fulfillment, but also psychological fulfillments. To be effective, those policies will also need participations of the general public. Policies that hurt the mental well-being of the people or ones they find disagreeable with their cultural or religious values will most likely fail. Some of those values that are proven wrong can be amended by public education. But some values, like religion, are considered to be set in stones, and people will adhere to them until the end of their lives. In this case, compromises will need to be made. This is why a discourse in bioethics is important, in order to accommodate all points of view and to find a consensus solution that works for the common good. Although agriculture may simply be viewed as a food production system, its application and impact is not without controversies.
As an example, a relatively recent phenomenon in Indonesia is shifting consumption pattern toward rice as the staple food. People from many regions in Indonesia traditionally consumed a more diverse diet because their environment is not always suitable for growing rice or the supply of rice is not always available all year round. The changing preference for rice has caused a decline in the cultivation of other food crops and putting an enormous pressure on the national rice production and distribution system. As a result, when there is a slight disturbance on the system, many regions with little or no rice-growing capability are under threat from high price of rice and even starvation, because alternative food crops have been neglected or abandoned due to the low demand associated with them.
This problem illustrates the impact of individual preferences on their own food security. Is it ethical to deny people from following their own preference even when it can potentially harm them in the long run? The answer can vary depending on where we are, but in Indonesia we choose the path of public education because we believe that people can make the right choice when they are fully informed on the consequences.
The above example also illustrates that development of agricultural systems will need to observe local custom and belief observance. Customs and norms are often built from ancient experiments which resulted in a tradition adapted to local conditions. Careless intervention of these cultural norms and values not only hurt the feeling and dignity of the people, but can sometimes lead to disastrous consequences from the application of ill-adapted technologies. Similarly, changing local diets and farming practices to fit an over-generalized national policy can potentially harm the food security of that region. Thus, new policies should respect and carefully consider local customs and religious values.
Another inherent problem in creating agricultural policies for food security is the contradiction between improving farmer's income and maintaining low food prices for the general public, in which a large portion still lives under the poverty line. As a consequence, improving farmer's income should not be achieved by increasing the prices of agricultural products, but by other means such as by increasing land holding size through cooperative farming or by improving agricultural productivity.
Increasing productivity, however, does not always guarantee a higher profit for farmers, as it is often accompanied by decreased prices. Therefore once increased productivity is achieved, the govern-ment needs to intervene market to prevent price of agricultural products from falling below the commercial threshold during the harvest season. Conversely, price should not increase too much when available food stock is low, when even farmers themselves become a consumer since their own stock is already depleted and the next harvest is yet to come. This role of the government should be done in such a way that regulates and maintains the national food supply to ensure food availability all year round at a reasonable price.
One of the driving forces behind the increased productivity is improved crop varieties developed by classical breeding and genetic engineering. Genetically modified organisms (GMO) have been under a lot of public scrutiny lately, mostly because many views that these organisms have no precedent in nature and therefore may carry some unknown risks that can harm humans and the environment in general. Such concern is valid, and the government needs to address this problem to ensure public safety while at the same time prevents irrational resistance of a potentially useful technology.
To have a productive and rational debate on the issue, concerns that could be solved by scientific studies need to be separated from those involving legal, philosophical, and moral concerns. Scientific questions such as whether transgenic corn would produce allergic reaction or not can usually be answered in a clear cut manner using a correct scientific experiment. Current method of food safety tests and environmental safety tests for GMO before any commercial release of GMO in Indonesia are the result of well-formulated scientific questions regarding the potential risks of genetically modified organisms. On the other hand, there may not be a ‘correct’ answer to questions related to legal, philosophical, and moral dimension of GMO. Answers to those questions may result from a consensus or a decision by those holding the authority over the issue.
Some concerns regarding GMO, albeit valid, apply equally to organisms obtained from nature or selected through conventional breeding. Natural herbicide-tolerant mutants can also transfer their genes to wild relatives, yet few people seemed concerned if those so called ‘natural’ organisms were released without proper environmental and food safety tests. This shows that there is an underlying fear toward a new technology rather than a serious concern toward environmental safety. Attributing universal risk only toward GMO gives a wrong impression toward genetic modifications, making it appears as a dangerous and malevolent technology. In a way, GMO that passed those safety tests may actually be safer than their natural counterparts, where safety tests are not as rigorously enforced when they are released.
Similar concerns were shown over the use of synthetic chemicals, from fertilizers to food additives, on agricultural products. As in the case of GMO, it should be demonstrated that no hazard will occur on the environment and human health if those chemicals are used. In other word, our attention should be focused on the safety part, rather than the adjectives synthetic versus natural.
Another important component in Indonesian agriculture is the extensive use of livestock. Livestock are kept to supply the need for animal proteins and raw materials for clothing and other necessities. They are also an integral part of our traditional farming system and a necessary component of many traditional and religious rites. But they also become the object of needless sufferings, from inhumane rearing system, transportation activities, to slaughtering practices. Efforts are continuously made to eliminate these misconducts. Moreover, even our traditional and religious teachings emphasized the need to speed up the slaughtering process and encourage the use of the sharpest blade to prevent prolonged suffering of the animals.
Respect and compassion toward other living things should not be confined to animal livestock, but also extend toward all living things in our ecosystem.
After all, our life depends not only on our livestock and plants that we cultivate, but also on other living things not directly connected with our lives. This is because nature is a complex web of interdependent systems. Disruption of one system can affect other systems and eventually return to haunt us. We have learned how careless introduction of rabbits and cane toad to Australia had caused ecological disaster; therefore most countries now have quarantine procedures and strict rules regarding introduced species.
However, we seem less concerned about the other side of the coin: which is the loss of native species due to extinction caused by human activities. Numerous species have perished due to habitat encroachment or environmental damage and pollution caused by human activities. Some of them may produce unknown exotic compounds that cure diseases. Some may disrupt the life cycle of our agricultural pests. Some may not matter to us, because their place in the food chain is not connected to ours. But even that can be misleading. Snakes normally found in rice fields may amount to nothing but nuisance to us, only when we have a great mice infestation on our field that we realize how useful they are. In other words, there are a lot of things that we miss or lost simply because our present knowledge has not understood impact of their presence. We can only hope that we do not grasp their significance when it is already too late.
That is one of the reasons why we take serious steps in conserving nature and maintain biodiversity. Some of the biodiversities can be preserved by our ongoing germplasm collection and conservation program, while others can only be saved by preserving their habitat from human encroachment. It is a very difficult task because sometimes we have to confront people with a more urgent need of feeding their family. Educating them on this issue can be challenging, because the negative effects of their actions are often uncertain, too abstract, or can only be felt in the distant future. It is clear that such program needs to be implemented along with a population control program, which is carried out by encouraging families to have two children or less.
At last but not least, finally, I would like to underline that the development of national policies on agriculture will not be free from controversies; therefore it must be based on solid scientific groundwork and bioethics. The issues can be complex, therefore active discussions by various stakeholders need to be encouraged to achieve a consensus that works for the common good.
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